In the world of Donald Trump, double-speak, dishonesty and hypocrisy are on display almost daily for anyone willing to look or listen. Such hypocrisy, put forth by Trump or those around him, has been revealed once again in recent days in connection with an immigration story originating right here in New Jersey.

The story bears resemblance to so many others that speak to the plight of immigrants in our midst — those with papers, those without; those in this country 20 years, those here 20 months – and have become commonplace since Trump vowed to crack down on “illegal” migrants during his run to the White House in 2016.

This latest story, though, first reported on Dec. 6 by The New York Times, comes with a twist, as it reveals that at least two women who could be classified “undocumented immigrants,” or just plain ol’ “illegals,” in the parlance of Trump’s base, had been working for years at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster.

Victorina Morales, a 45-year-old native of Guatemala, told The Times she had made Trump’s bed and cleaned his toilet. She said she crossed the border illegally in 1999, was eventually hired by the Trump property, and had been working there with fake documents. She said she and others had decided to come forward because “we are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money.”

On Tuesday, Morales, through her attorney, Anibal Romero, made it known she would be seeking asylum through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Romero represents four additional Trump National employees who allege they were threatened with deportation and called racial slurs. What’s more, the case has now also drawn notice from the state Attorney General’s Office.

Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica, and now a legal U.S. resident, told The Times she knew of many undocumented people who were hired at Trump National without papers when she worked there between 2010 and 2013. The original Times’ story, by Miriam Jordan, made clear “there is no evidence that Mr. Trump or Trump Organization executives knew of their immigration status.”

As is most certainly the case with many U.S. corporations and small businesses, if Trump or those supervisors he employs didn’t know, it’s because they didn’t want to know.

President Donald Trump attended the 72nd U.S. Women's Open at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster in July.(Photo: Jeremy Smith/Special to NorthJer, Copyright owned by Jeremy Smith;)

Such is the exploitation game played in regard to “undocumented immigrants” in this country, from one coast to the other, and the utter hypocrisy of the Trump “crackdown” that is at the heart of it.

I single out Trump as the most egregious example of such hypocrisy not because he is president, but because he has made this issue – “standing tough on immigration” – the very centerpiece of his campaign and his presidency. He has used the “fear of the other” dozens of times as a wedge issue to rev up the “nativist” branch of his party whenever necessary. (Witness his incessant carrying on about the “invasion” coming from the so-called migrant “caravan” out of Central America just days before the midterm elections).

Trump’s hypocrisy sets him apart, in my view, from the landscaper boss or contractor who might look the other way when he swings by the local hardware store to pick up “day laborers” to work a job for a few hours. There might well be a level of worker abuse in those cases, too, but those employers aren’t insulting workers out of the other side of their mouths to cynically gain political favor.

What we should take away here first and foremost is the courage of these women for coming forward to speak, in effect, against the most powerful man in the world. The story also speaks to the nuances and shortcomings of our broken immigration system, and how we can’t ever get around to fixing it because folks in Washington are fixated on the politics of it all, and thus waste all their time on the issue in endless debate about that damned “wall.”

Bruce Lowry is the editorial page editor for The Record and NorthJersey.com